In ancient Roman religion Victoria was the deified personification of victory. She first appears during the first Punic War, seemingly as a Romanised re-naming of Nike, the goddess of victory associated with Rome's Greek allies in the Greek mainland and in Magna Graecia. Thereafter she comes to symbolise Rome's eventual hegemony and right to rule. She is a deified abstraction, entitled to a cult. But unlike Nike, she has virtually no mythology of her own.
Victoria (or Nike) on a fresco from Pompeii, Neronian era
Arch of Trajan (Benevento), with a pair of winged victories in the spandrels
Victoria on top of the Berlin Victory Column. Cast by Gladenbeck, Berlin)
Intaglio in lapis lazuli representing Victoria, 100 - 200 A.D., found in Tongeren Gallo-Roman museum, Tongres
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. It is, in other words, considered an embodiment or an incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified. These include numerous types of places, especially cities, countries, and continents, elements of the natural world such as the trees or four seasons, four elements, four cardinal winds, five senses, and abstractions such as virtues, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, the nine Muses, or death.
Set of porcelain figures of personifications of the four continents, German, c. 1775, from left: Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. Of these, Africa has retained her classical attributes. Formerly James Hazen Hyde collection.
Jean Goujon, The Four Seasons, reliefs on the Hôtel Carnavalet, Paris, c. 1550s.
Sandro Botticelli, Calumny of Apelles (c. 1494–95), with 8 personification figures: (from left) Hope, Repentance, Perfidy, innocent victim, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance, the king, Suspicion.
Constance and Fortitude in Vienna. Early modern statues with classical iconography.